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I began researching how to publish early on in my writing endeavors. Originally, I was going to self publish only an e-book. I was surprised to find out about how many e-book formats exist. I really thought that it would be pretty standard, but it is not.

The main formats are AZW, Mobi, ePUB and PDF. It all depends on the e reader or device. So, if you are wanting to make your e-book available to different devices, it is important to provide your book in at least the main e-book formats.

I began reading about how to do this. If I was going to self publish an e-book, I needed to know how to format it. That became a little overwhelming. So, I began to read about publishers that would do that for me.

That led me to the world of self publishing. To my surprise, I learned that today the majority of new books are self published. An author can handle every step of design, editing, publishing and marketing themselves. Or, they can outsource different pieces, or all, of the process.

These self publishing companies will not only format and publish my book as an e-book, but also in hard copy. Print on Demand is gaining popularity within the publishing world. Now, because of technology, a publisher does not have to print hundreds to thousands of books to be profitable. The publisher can print one book or many books when an order is placed.

This speeds up the timetable from the time a book is written to the time it is published. Instead of months, it now has become weeks. One downside can be difficulty of getting your book into bookstores. However, with the growth of online book selling, such as, Amazon, this is not really that detrimental any longer.

I am leaning toward the self publishing route. However, choosing which self publishing company to partner with has been a little overwhelming also. The list is long. Some make money on fees paid by an author to publish a book. Others receive income also on books sold like a traditional publisher. Then, many provide different packages of services depending on how much an author wants help in publishing their book.

Whew! I hope to make a decision within the next month, so that I can have my book published in early 2013. I am really excited about getting it done. I already have outlined a couple more books, so I hope everything that I am learning on this first book will help speed up the process on the others.